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Summary: details in search of a good story.
Review: I can't understand how this very tedious piece of junk ever made it to anyones' best seller list. The author obvoiusly studied the flora of the region, but there is no interesting ending to this thing. It just sort of stops and does so with an unlikely bit of forced plotting. What a waste of time.
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Summary: Moving 19th Century Style Prose
Review: Mr. Frazier can focus an image on the mind's eye better than any modern writer I've read. He is a true craftsman with the English word and a writer who is a throw back to the 19th Century when the hand-written word in prose, poetry, and communicative letters described our world much better than TV, movies, and computers. This book is a classic and I hope there are more to come.
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Summary: COLD MOUNTAIN is Fiction that rings with Truth.
Review: My grandmother, who was born in Georgia about ten years after her grandfather died, knew just one story about his Civil War experience. It went more or less like this: "Soon after the war began, Grandpa went away on a white horse with his brother and his neighbors and all their kin. He wasn't heard from for a long time. One day, news came that he'd been killed someplace far away. Months went by, and his family gradually learned to put their thoughts of him aside. In time, the war stopped in Georgia. One Sunday morning, a gaunt, bedraggled figure stepped from the trees bordering the old home place and startled everyone. It was Grandpa, who'd walked all the way home from the war. He said he'd survived by picking loose corn from cattle fodder and eating wild berries and fiddleheads." Thanks, Mr. Frazier, for telling a better story, and one my grandma would have surely enjoyed. Like real life, the romance is in the details.
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Summary: An unforgettable experience
Review: COLD MOUNTAIN is a classic in every respect. Frazier gives his readers a love story, a history lesson and heartbreak all within the setting of the beautiful and haunting Blue Ridge Mountains. Inman's and Ada's struggles will leave you changed in the way you view your own life and with a greater appreciation for how our country was shaped by the Civil War. A must read.
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Summary: The North Carolina Test of Time
Review: I've read this book, and I've read the reviews, and I can tell you this book will outlast us all. It is a classic and at the risk of offending the literati among us, I'm glad Mingella is the director who will adapt this American odyssey to the silver screen. He won't bastardize it as is so often the case with books made into movies. May he succeed in getting this story through to our younger citizens the way Cameron succeeded in telling the story of the Titanic. I hope more high school juniors who are assigned this book may learn that life isn't about instant gratification and there are no guarantees of a happy ending.The book is slow paced in the beginning but then time moves slower in North Carolina. I know. I lived there and walked the land and this is a book about a man's walking the land and a woman's growing to understand it. Sorry that those who weaned on Hollywood hype can't appreciate that. But then, I've grown to accept that life is full of people who either love or hate with little in-between. Count me among the lovers of this book and, "Hey, Mr. Charles Frazier, been meaning to get up with you and tell you I like your book!
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Summary: Middle-of-the-Road Long Road Home Story
Review: I read this work by Frazier with much anticipation, given the lavish praise by the critics as the National Book Award winner. The fact that Cold Mountain was showing strong staying power on the bestseller list should have dampened my expectations. Cold Mountain is an interesting story, but it is neither classic nor a masterpiece. It is popular because it plays on the simple emotions and escapist tendencies of our times - while not asking too much thought from the reader. It is not a definitive work on the Civil War - towards that end it is, at best, a PC commentary on pernicious antebellum southern institutions - and contains a least one historical inaccuracy (which invalidates the "historical" fiction label being passed around concerning this work). Cold Mountain is certainly at the top of the heap in literary value for books on the bestseller lists - but that's pretty short praise. National Book Award? Not even close. Written after the manner of McCarthy or McMurtry, but with far less effect. The tale of Ada and Inman is well told, but is all on the surface. Worth reading, but only just. P.S. What is the historical inaccuracy? There were no South Carolina regiments that participated in the Confederate assault focused on the Copse of Trees on Cemetery Ridge on the third day at Gettysburg. Perrin's brigade was nearby, but never advanced. A simple reference to Coddington's great work The Gettysburg Campaign would have corrected this erroneous reference.
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Summary: Real life isn't all happy or sad.
Review: This book is a fabulous reading experience. The Civil War (or any war, for that matter) is so much more than who shot whom, when, and where. War CHANGES people, but there are some things that don't change even in the context of the most insurmountable odds, and to understand that is to "get" the point of this story. The ending stunned me to the extent that even days later I found myself forgetting that I hadn't read it and wanting to finish it to see how it turns out. Then I would remember - and my reaction was a bit like what Ada's might have been even during the time of the last scene in the book.
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Summary: one of the most haunting works I've ever read...
Review: A friend asked me if I wanted to read a book he had just read. Normally my taste in books doesn't run with others...but this time I hit a gold mine!!! Frazier draws you along with his characters, as if you are standing right beside them. You feel the heartache as Inman leaves Ada, smell the powder as Inman relives the battles he has fought in, and root Inman along as he begins his long odessey home. From the moment Inman began he journey, I knew what the ending would be, but read on, hoping that I could be wrong. I look forward to reading anything else Charles Frazier cares to write.
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Summary: Vivid Images intertwined with a captivating tale.
Review: "Cold Mountain" is the most descriptive book I have read in quite awhile. The images brought to mind by Mr. Frazier's descriptions linger long after the book is read. Having grown up in the foot hills of tha Appalachian Mountains, his detailed imagery of the topography, flora, fauna and people brought to mind many happy reminders of events in my childhood. Not only has he captured the physical elements of the setting perfectly, but he has also accurately and vivdly portrayed the human drama that unfolded for many people of the south during that era. A must read for anyone interested in that part of American history and an excellent and entertaining read for anyone who relishes a story about the drama of the human existence.
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Summary: I threw this book against the wall when I finished it!
Review: Yes, it's beautifully written. Yes, it's compelling and filled with memorable lines and haunting imagery. But what a horrible ending! It upset me so much I regretted ever picking up the book. I realize that a potential classic wouldn't end with "and they lived happily ever after" but why were Ada and Inman both thwarted in such stupid and senseless ways? Two fine characters like that deserved better, if not happier, fates.
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